16
Karma & Saṃsāra — Action and Its Fruit
before this →Ṛta — The Order
Ṛta says the world is ordered. Karma says that you are inside that order: every action leaves a trace, and the trace ripens. Saṃsāra is the resulting wheel.
Three kinds of accumulated action
sañcita · prārabdha · āgāmi
Sañcita: the whole store, not yet ripened. Prārabdha: the portion currently bearing fruit — this life as given. Āgāmi: what we are adding now, to ripen later. The three explain why the present is not simply deserved and not simply free.
the keyKarma is not fate. Fate would make action pointless. Karma makes
action the one thing that does not disappear — which is why the Gītā’s answer is not
to escape action but to act without grasping its fruit (niṣkāma karma).
SAÑCITAthe stored trace
PRĀRABDHAwhat is now ripening — this life
ĀGĀMIwhat we add now
PHALAthe fruit, elsewhere or later
The wheel and its exit
Saṃsāra is not a punishment; it is a mechanism. Its exit is not more action but the knowledge that dissolves the actor’s confusion — the same exit all the darśanas point toward under different names: mokṣa, kaivalya, nirvāṇa.
introduces →karmasaṃsārapunarjanmaniṣkāmamokṣa